We all watch the news with horror when we hear about a homicide that happens not that far away from us. While a murder just blocks or even a couple of towns away from your house would make anyone uneasy, in the long run, most likely, where you live is relatively safe.

So we wanted to get the facts straight and dug into the FBI crime data in order to identify the places with the most murders and the highest murder rates per capita in Wisconsin.

How we calculated the murder capitals of Wisconsin

While there are surveys and public polls on what cities in a state are the most dangerous, we didn’t want to rely on speculation and opinion. Instead, we looked at the hard numbers from the FBI’s last year of reporting. Specifically, we analyzed the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report which summarizes the number of murders that may happen in each city per year.

We only looked every single city in Wisconsin for which FBI data was available for the most recent FBI Crime In The United States. That left us with 25 cities to rank.

We felt as if a small place with 2,500 people and two murders makes it a lot more dangerous than a city of 25,000 people with one murder.We must note that this report is not an analysis of the effectiveness of local police departments. It simply states where murders occurred most frequently.

Milwaukee is the largest city in the state of Wisconsin and the fifth-largest city in the Midwestern United States. The county seat of Milwaukee County, it is on Lake Michigan’s western shore. Ranked by estimated 2014 population, Milwaukee was the 31st largest city in the United States. The city’s estimated population in 2015 was 600,155. Milwaukee is the main cultural and economic center of the Milwaukee metropolitan area. It is also part of the larger Milwaukee-Racine-Waukesha combined statistical area, which had an estimated population of 2,026,243 in the 2010 census.

Kenosha is a city in and the county seat of Kenosha County, Wisconsin, United States. Kenosha is on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. With an estimated population of 99,889 as of July 1, 2013, it is the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin and the fourth-largest city on Lake Michigan. The city is part of the United States Census Bureau’s Chicago Combined Statistical Area.

Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the seat of Dane County. As of July 1, 2016, Madison’s estimated population of 252,551 made it the second-largest city in Wisconsin, after Milwaukee, and the 82nd-largest in the United States. The city forms the core of the United States Census Bureau’s Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Dane County and neighboring Iowa, Green, and Columbia counties. The Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area’s 2010 population was 568,593.

Baraboo is a city in and the county seat of Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States. The largest city in the county, Baraboo is the principal city of the Baraboo Micropolitan Statistical Area. Its 2010 population was 12,048. It is situated on the Baraboo River.

Glendale is a city in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 12,872 at the 2010 census.

There You Have It – The Places With The Most Murders In Wisconsin For 2019

If you’re looking at the places in Wisconsin with the most murders, and where residents have the highest chances of being killed themselves, this is an accurate list. Again, these statistics are an indication of where crimes occur, not a statement about the effectiveness of the law enforcement in the areas they serve.